International Digital Direct Election

INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL DIRECT ELECTION: AN
APPROACH ABOUT COLLABORATION BETWEEN WEB
TOOLS AND MOBILE

Waldoir Valentim Gomes Junior1; Ângela Iara Zotti1,2; Claudia de Oliveira Bueno1,2; Renato
Jorge Prim1; Hugo Cesar Hoeschl, PhD1,2
1
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão do Conhecimento
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Campus Universitário, Trindade, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil.
{waldoir;reprim}@gmail.com
2
Instituto de Governo Eletrônico, Inteligência e Sistemas – i3G. Rua Lauro Linhares, 728 sl. 105. Trindade,
Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil.
{iara.zotti; claudia.bueno; hugo.hoeschl}@i3g.org.br

ABSTRACT
The intense participation of a population to support decisions through participatory democratic process is hampered by a
number of issues such as remote location, infrastructure, availability of time and political organization among the
communities. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has emerged as an alternative solution to this
problem. ICT associated with the power of the Internet represent true gear joint operational processes of governments and
nongovernmental entities providing flow of information, services and popular participation. On the one hand the Internet
has democratized access to information for people the mobile has democratized communication. In this sense, the Web
tools have been used as a means of dissemination and mobile as a means of voting and counting to hold the first
International Digital Direct Election - ID2E. This article aims to describe the ID2E performed in order to test the viability
for the international voting by mobiles using SMS protocol, using Web 2.0 tools to facilitate discussions about the
election main theme.

KEYWORDS
Information and communication technologies, digital election, e-democracy, WEB collaborative tools, mobile.

1. INTRODUCTION
Many initiatives have been proposed to participatory democratic processes refer to the Web environment,
making it possible popular participation in the discussion of matters of any kind, giving everyone the power
to opinion and decision.
As a result, a number of tools and web applications are available to assist and expand the e-democracy.
On the one hand the Internet has democratized access to information for people mobile has democratized the
communication. On the Internet, access to a wealth of information is available for a relatively short time to
any User of the system. In the same vein the mobile phone has been providing not only mobility, but rather a
real ability to interact with various technologies that allow leaving literally "the world in our hands."
A few years ago mobile phones, have spread rapidly in most developed countries, however, presents
significant growth in developing or poor countries. Currently there are around 4.1 billion mobile phones, with
China on top in numbers of aircraft in the world, followed by India, the United States and Russia.
The mobile phone features a number of bundled services, especially SMS (Short Message Service) is a
standardized communication service, using a communication protocol that allows you exchange short text
messages between mobile handset. The SMS service basically uses 5 protocols, and the employee is the
SMPP (Short Message Peer to Peer), the main power could easily send messages between different carriers, it
supports a greater number portability.

The "torpedo", the popular name of SMS, soon took the lead of mobile applications and was the great
propagator of data usage on mobile phones.
In Brazil, the Research “ICT households and Users 2008” of Brazil Internet Steering Committee (CGI),
found that about 56% of respondents have a mobile phone, of which 41% have Internet access. That survey
indicated that 51% of the respondents have in text message (SMS), the main feature used in cell phone
followed by 15% using the function of sending and receiving photos and images. In this sense, the Web tools
have been used as a means of dissemination and mobile as a means of voting and counting to hold the first
International Digital Direct Election - ID2E. This article aims to describe the ID2E performed in order to test
the viability for the international voting by mobiles using SMS protocol, using Web 2.0 tools to facilitate
discussions about the election main theme.

2. GENERAL REVIEW
The contemporary world is becoming flatter because of the effect of globalization, increasingly mediated by
the development of digital technologies and communication. Thus, globalization is used to characterize the
universal interdependence of nations, societies, production material, economic and intellectual. (Cartells
2002, Friedman 2007).
With the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and the evolution of the
Internet coupled with the increasing development of Electronic Government (e-Gov), emerge new
perspectives that facilitate the creation of new democratic institutions or their suitability for electronic
democracy. This must be understood not only by their technological characteristics, but examined from the
emergence of the Internet and direct participation of citizens in politics, through the use of new technologies
(Ramos Junior and Miranda 2007).
Equally, Garcia et all (2003) stated that in the information society the use of technologies, allowing the
promotion of citizenship "brings a new way of thinking about popular participation in public management, an
emerging democratic regime, genuine, divergent from all previously made predictions about the future of
democracy.”
In this sense, e-participation can be defined as "the possibility for citizens to participate in decision-
making, initiating acts of legislation, using electronic means of communication and especially the Internet."
"Committing to the relationship between society and government in a collaborative environment using the
electronic space" (Petrauskas 2006).
The discussion of this interaction between New Technologies of Information and Communication and
Policy has raised a series of questions about the limits of representative democracy and new forms of
political participation, expanding space for an improvement of this system, the realization of a deliberative
and participatory democracy.
The discussions and reviews are necessary elements for the development of any device, especially those
involving technology and communication that may influence the society. ICTs are already part of our daily
life, and the Internet has fundamental importance as a facilitating channel for bilateral relationship between
public officials and society in general. In this context, discussion groups are formed to allow interaction and
expansion of spaces for the exchange and communication (Bentivegna 2000, Davis 2000).
The changes with the introduction of information and communication technologies, did not affect the
nature of the political process - which still is as a political struggle for power - but the procedures of the
relationship between political actors and citizens, occurring now, a "media coverage of politics and a change
in the field of political communication” (Mazzoleni 2000).
Electronic Democracy (e-democracy) can therefore be defined as citizen participation through online
tools, because the citizens involved in decision-making processes through the Internet, or online systems.
In this view Boyd (2007) treats the electronic democracy as the process of "democratization of
democracy" where the use of technology is essential to promote citizen participation in political life.
The concept of Web 2.0 is found in the literature as the second generation of the world wide web,
although some authors disagree with this statement. However it is clear that Web 2.0 is characterized by a
strong trend centered on the concept of information exchange and collaboration among users through the
global network of websites and online services, and this exchange is organized according to ideas and
concepts (Lytras 2009).

The Internet has been adapting to new forms of communication, whether at the level of infrastructure,
from the popularization of broadband connections or service level, with the offer of editing tools, database,
publishing in multiple formats hypermedia web environment. This new proposed model called Web 2.0 has
been spreading despite some criticism from the academic and marketing view. Despite the differences, the
most important thing is to realize that innovation within the network will necessarily involve an intensive use
of collaborative tools, though.

3. INTERNATIONAL DIRECT DIGITAL ELECTION PROCESS
The experience was executed by the Information Society Studies Group – GESI/2009, linked to the
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC, and the e-Gov, Intelligence and Systems Institute – i3G,
both installed inside the city of Florianopolis – Santa Catarina – Brazil. The first ED2I was realized between
6 and 20 of November, in the year of 2009.
The tally of votes was done inside an application working on Dot Net platform, inside a server cell phone.
The experimentation had two objectives: evaluate an e-Voting method and the use of mobile devices as tools
for public decision taking; and evaluate the use of Web 2.0 environment for organization and conduction of
public discussions about these decisions.
The theme for discussion and voting was: “Is the United Nations accomplishing its mission?” To vote the
person should send a text message (SMS) with three characters for the phone number +55 48 88340682
(international) or 48 88340682 (Brazil), according to the instructions: If you want to vote YES the message
must contain the characters: 001, if the option is NOT the message must contain the characters: 002.
Any cell phone, regardless of carrier, from anywhere in the world could vote. There was no need to be a
PDA, SmartPhone or similar. Intent on making an international election, polling anywhere in the world, was
just to test the communication protocol for sending SMS through cell phones.
About security, as scientific seminar held during the votting process, using the technique of IBB (Multiple
Identical Ballot-Box) added by encrypting the votes, reaches higher security level with the existing protocols
in current electronic voting (Alefragis et all, 2004).
About the solution on sharing information inside Web 2.0 environments, about the voted theme, there was
selected the following pages: Delicious to publish links related to the experiment; iPetitions, to advice people
to the voting process; Twitter, and Blogger to the public post comments favorable or opposite to United
Nations; GMail, and Metajur Discussion List to privately post comments; Wikipedia, ScribD, and Slideshare
to publish reports or presentations resulting from the discussions about the theme; Skoob to share books
which maybe can give some historical base to the voting process, and help on argumentation about the
United Nations; Picasa, Flickr, and Panoramio to post pictures (with geographic position for the two last
pages) referred to votes assumed by the voters; You Tube to post vídeos related to the voters, assuming its
votes; Orkut, and FaceBook for the possible formation of social networks about the specified theme; and
Second Life to simulate the voting process inside virtual environments. In this paper, only the results of some
tools are going to be detailed. The tools access will be available on the references at the end of the article.
Before and during the election period, information regarding the election was released in these tools, such
as the convocatories in multiple languages, the arguments pro and con, which emphasized the theme
proposed for election as well as pictures of group meetings organizers.
Two groups were formed with the intention to raise arguments for the YES and the other for NO, and
disseminate them in the chosen Web 2.0 tools.

4 RESULTS
The cell phone used as a digital ballot box worked normally during the voting period, accumulating its basic
functions to send and receive voice calls, without any problem. The result was communicated immediately
after the final time, on 2009, November 20, at 17:00h GMT.
The result achieved was that 53.097% of the voters voted "NO" and 46.682% voted "yes". So, according
to ED2I result, the UN is not fulfilling its mission, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Voting tally: “Is The UN accomplishing its mission?”
SMS Text Option Quantity Percentual
001 SIM 211 46,68%
002 NÃO 240 53,10%
Null (avoided) votes 1 0,22%
Total Votes 452 100,00%

Table 2 shows the results surveyed after the e-Voting process experimentation: from the 452 votes sent to
the server cell phone, 434 had a correct format and were computed by the digital ballot box.

Table 2. Incorrect Votes or out of the ellection compliance: “Is UN accomplishing its mission?”

Votes Quantity %
Corrects 434 96,02
Incorrect Votes
Sintax error 9 1,99
International code unnecessarily (+55) 9 1,99
Total Votes 452 100,00

It´s important to say that 18 votes were received via SMS, but weren´t computed; and just one vote was
avoided. From the 18 votes received via SMS, but not computed, 9 were not because the voters included the
International Code (+55) inside the country (Brazil), attached to the server cell phone number, what
invalidated the vote, and 9 had a syntax error on the redaction of the string to identify the choose of the vote
(the two correct answers should be “001” or “002”, and not “1” or “2”, or even “oo1” or “oo2”, and so on).
The result of 452 votes seems to be low for a world experience. But the aim was to achieve at least the
maximum number of a Brazilian polling, which is no more than 500. More important than the number of
votes was to know if an international e-voting process by using SMS could be successful.
The votes were not identified by the system in order to maintain the secrecy of the vote. So, the
identification of the countries was done by some web tools as Flickr, iPetitions, Panoramio and also by
emails through the voluntary geographic identification.
About the expected international participation for the process, it was verified the participation of citizens
from 14 countries: Brazil, United States of America, Argentina, Chile, Peru, England, Denmark, Netherlands,
Poland, Italy, Spain, Kenya, Egypt and Australia.

5 CONCLUSIONS
The ED2I experience pioneered the initiative of an intercontinental election held and refined by cell phone, in
addition to analyze the use of tools of information technology and communication. It was an experience that
provided people from different countries could vote synchronously and for the same purposes and options.
The experience of ED²I includes the following developments: a) International qualification for voting; b)
2.0 integrated environment interaction; c) studies for an Android version (in development).
In regard to safety devices, as well as access to mobile applications, some experts have proposed that
these applications may be safer than the Internet because access is “dedicated”.
Another issue is that there are companies that have developped applications for mobile banking using
long-dynamic codes in order to prevent fraud and increase the array of services. This could well be used in
applications of this nature. Add to this, the authentication of the device and the User and the use of
passwords, systems of verification and encryption can be alternatives to ensure public safety mobile
applications.
To strengthen the security issue, it is suggested as support systems based on the same ballot "identical
ballot boxes" (IBB), which every vote received is replicated electronically. IBB aims to provide guarantees in
terms of legitimacy, anonymity, security and secrecy of the vote and the voting process.

The voting process via mobile phone, using SMS will become safer, the more the technological artefacts
are used. The passwords and encryption are increasingly providing more robust security and integrity to
transmit information. On the other hand the phone will be improved in order to identify the User and give
him/her the right to vote.
Security procedures using biometrics should and can be better explored in the User ID voting. The
biometric identification technologies are already highly sedimented varying only the applications depending
on the level of security. The challenging character would be to put this technology in a cell phone, and from
its technological attributes identifying the iris, retina, voice, fingerprint and others.
Web 2.0 was the protagonist of the disclosure of this election, using the tools of communication. They
own a good power of penetration to interact in order to convince people to participate. By themselves the
tools do not motivate people to vote, but it can be one way of motivating people to participate.
During the process, it was realized that some people did not know how to send an SMS. So, the lesson is
that when something involves technology a brief tutorial must be presented.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank i3G Institute for part of the financial support for this document and GESI/2009 by the
effort in performing the ED2I process.

REFERENCES
Alefragis, P.S. et all, 2004. An electronic voting scheme with physical multiple administrators and identical ballot boxes,
ICWI 2004: Madrid, Spain. pp. 99-106.
Bentivegna, S., 2000. Hablar de Política En La Red: Los Newgroups Políticos. Cuadernos De Información Y
Comunicación – Ciberdemocracia , Madrid, ES.
Boyd, Ovid Pacific, 2007. What Are the Future Possibilities of eDemocracy? A Discussion Paper. Springer-Verlag,
Berlin Heidelberg.
Castells, M., 2002. A sociedade em Rede. Paz e Terra, São Paulo, BR.
Davis, R., 2000. Tecnologias de la comunicación y democracia: El factor Internet. Cuadernos de Información y
Comunicación – Ciberdemocracia, Madrid, Universidad Complutense.
Friedman, T. L., 2007. O mundo é plano: um breve histórico do século XXI. Objetiva, Rio de janeiro, BR.
Garcia, T. H. B. et all, 2003. A democracia na era do governo eletrônico. In: II Simposio Internacional de Propriedade
Intelectual, Informação e Ética. In: II Simposio Internacional de Propriedade Intelectual, Informação e Ética-
Ciberética 2003, Anais do II Ciberética, 2003. v. 1. p. 1-16.
Lytras, M. D. Dimiani, E. Pablos, P. O., 2009. Web 2.0: The Bussines Modell. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
Mazzoleni, G., 2000. La Revolución Simbólica de Internet. Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación –
Ciberdemocracia, Madrid, Universidad Complutense.
Petrauskas, R., 2006. Los princípios y la implementación de la democracia electrónica. In: Derechos y Tecnología: Las
actividades de los poderes públicos, Thomson Civitas, Universidad de Zaragoza (Espanha), pp 85-113.
Ramos Júnior, H. S. et all, 2007. Democracia Eletrônica como um Sistema Teleológico e Emergente. In: Teoria Geral de
Sistemas: Uma abordagem multidisciplinar do conhecimento, Florianópolis: EGC, 2007. PP.36-44.
Some Web tools adresses for ED2I:
http://delicious.com/ Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.ipetitions.com/ Accessed in November, 2010
http://siweb20.blogspot.com/start Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.scribd.com/siweb20Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.slideshare.net/ Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.flickr.com/ Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.panoramio.com/ Accessed in November, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/ Accessed in November, 2009

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